TAKE a stroll through Midtown Manhattan on any given weekday afternoon and it’s hard to imagine peace and quiet existing anywhere on the planet, let alone right in New York City itself. Look hard enough, though, and you’ll find a few patches of tranquility amid all the urban hustle and bustle – New York neighborhoods where a person can relax on their front porch, barbecue in their backyard, wash their car in their driveway or park in their very own garage.

Sure, it sounds like the sort of suburban living you’d have to head far from Gotham to enjoy, but if you know where to go, it can be just a subway ride away.

Midwood Park

STEPPING off the Q train at the Avenue H stop in Brooklyn, you might very well think that you’ve died and gone to, well, Teaneck.

Tall, leafy trees spread over the sidewalks and down a grassy median running through the middle of the street. Wood-framed single-family houses with garages and front porches sit on large, well-kept lots. Welcome to Midwood Park.

“It’s very comfortable,” says Nick Pelliccione, who, with his wife and three children, has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. “You have a nice yard. You can have a drink on the deck, barbecue in the back.

“My children are still at home, and my mother-in-law lives with us, and there’s no problem with space. It’s no big deal to have 20 to 25 people over for dinner.”

When Michael Farrell, a retired NYPD inspector, moved into the neighborhood in 1988, homes were selling in the low to mid-$300,000s.

“Six months ago, that black house there went for $1.2 million,” he says, nodding toward a three-story Vic-torian down the block.

Cash alone, though, probably won’t be enough to snag a home here. Chances are you’ll also need a bit of patience. With only 120 or so homes in the neighborhood, inventory is limited.

“I have one listing right now in Midwood Park,” says Mary Kay Gallagher, one of the area’s more prominent brokers. “People are looking, but people aren’t selling. It’s what people want. They want room, they want a driveway, they want a garage.”

Riverdale

GETTING off the train at Riverdale and walking uphill from the Hudson into the heart of the neighborhood, you’ll notice right away one very strange (for New York City, anyway) thing – there aren’t any sidewalks. It’s almost bizarre, really – a part of The Bronx with no sidewalks?

Then again, Riverdale has never quite been your classic Bronx neighborhood. With large detached houses sitting on broad, sprawling lots, there’s an undeniable upstate feel to the place. Or, to suggest an unofficial motto for the nabe: “It’s not Westchester, but you can see it from here.”

Portfolio manager Lori Miller and her husband, David, moved to the neighborhood from Park Slope eight years ago.

“We wanted to have a yard, a garage, to be able to do yard work,” she says.

At the same time, they didn’t want to leave the city, which made Riverdale an ideal fit. In a wooden, two-story home on a large lot just a few blocks away from the river, Miller says she’s still able to get into Manhattan in no time.

“On weekends you can drive to Manhattan in 10 minutes,” she says. “The transportation here is great. You have the Express Bus and the 1 subway line. I work in Manhattan, and I take the Metro-North train in.”

Vincent Vanderbent, a Riverdale resident for 3 1/2years, agrees that the commute is painless.

“It’s very easy to get into the city,” he says. “We feel very connected to the city here.”

“Here you get a nice mix of young people with families, people who have just moved from Manhattan and older people who have lived here all their lives,” she says.

And as for sidewalks, Miller isn’t interested.

“I wouldn’t want them,” she says. “They’d clutter things up.”

FOREST HILLS

IF you didn’t know you were in Queens, you’d probably think you’d somehow ended up in Princeton. With tree-lined streets, stately old Tudor houses, a handful of handsome brick apartment buildings and the quad-like expanse of Station Square, Forest Hills resembles nothing so much as a prosperous university town.

Forest Hills Gardens, the toniest part of Forest Hills, was one of the first planned communities in the United States, designed around the turn of the last century by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and modeled after the English “garden cities” popular at the time. The plan called for a central square, a railroad station, an inn and 1,500 houses. Rents would start at $12 a month to ensure that the locals would be a well-heeled lot.

And, well, for the most part they were – and still are today.

“You come looking for something today with just a million dollars and they’ll just laugh you out the door,” marvels Anthony Kelly, a long-time resident of the neighborhood. “When I bought here 30 years ago, a nice house cost about $100,000.”

“It’s at least $1.5 million and up these days for detached homes,” says Joan Lebowitz, a broker with Sarah Jones Realty.

In addition to money, having a few kids will help you fit into the neighborhood. Despite the high prices, the area has become a haven for young families.

“I started a family,” says mortgage broker and former Manhattan resident Vincent Dagnillo, explaining how he came to the neighborhood where he now lives with his wife and two kids. Dagnillo likes that he is “able to have a part of the city, but still have the residential feeling, too.”

“You can go out walking at night,” he says. “It’s safe. It’s very comfortable.”

Tottenville

WANT to get away from it all without quite getting away from it all? Try Tot-tenville. At the southernmost tip of Staten Island, this bucolic spot is the farthest a person can stray from the bustle of Manhattan while still keeping a New York City address.

Lovely old Victorians mingle with smaller wooden houses and newer brick and stucco construction. Down by the water, a few modernist experiments look across the way to Perth Amboy. Here and there an odd condo or two breaks up the area’s suburban vibe -but these structures are clearly in the minority.

Which, it goes almost without saying, sets Tottenville apart from most of your other New York neighborhoods.

As Shelley Harwayne, former District 2 school superintendent and decades-long resident of the area, says, “You don’t feel like you’re in New York, here. You could be in Cape Cod.”

“Look at all this,” she says, showing off her house’s broad back lawn and water views. “Our friends from the city can’t believe this.”

Harwayne and her husband, Neil, came across their house 25 years ago, looking for a quiet area in which to raise their kids. It just happens to sit on the very lot purchased by neighborhood namesake William Totten more than 100 years ago.

Which brings up one thing Tottenville has that many similarly suburban areas often seem to lack -history.

“You have people who go back four and five generations still living in this community,” notes Linda Hauck, founding director of the Tottenville Historical Society.

However, that is changing, Hauck says, as new residents move to the area.

“People are coming here for the space,” she says. “They’re coming for the quiet.”

There is, though, a touch of trouble in paradise. As area real-estate prices have followed the city’s upward swing, developers have flocked to Tottenville, sometimes demolishing older houses.

“We’re not only losing our historic houses,” Hauck says, “but we’re also having problems with overpopulation.”

Overpopulation. Not the word you’d typically use for a city neighborhood stacked with secluded (by New York standards) homes. But then, so far as Gotham goes, Tottenville is far from typical.